May 18, 2012

"... a project founded by Bjørn Lomborg in which expert economists write detailed papers every four years and then gather to vote on the answer to a simple question: Imagine you had $75 billion to donate to worthwhile causes. What would you do, and where should we start?"

25 comments:

I'm a fan of Lomborg and the Copenhagen Consensus. He has written about another Consensus item: one of the most efficient uses of money aimed at improving people's lives in third-world countries is making clean water available.

This is nothing new for him. His book, Cool It!, had argued that the expenditure of large sums to reduce carbon emissions was grossly inefficient if the object was to improve the quality of life for the most people. The same investment in basic nutrition and disease prevention programs generated hugely greater returns.

The latest consensus essentially repeats that point, and is really just common sense expressed in economist-speak. What's amazing is how uncommon common sense is among the do-gooder set.

Part of the reason is that so many ostenible do-gooders are mostly interested only in doing good by their particular agenda, which often turns out to be a way of diverting resources (almost never their own) to promoting projects of interest and benefit to them.

2008:1. Micronutrient supplements for children (vitamin A and zinc)2. The Doha development agenda3. Micronutrient fortification (iron and salt iodization)4. Expanded immunization coverage for children5. Biofortification

2004:1. Control of HIV/AIDS2. Providing micro nutrients3. Trade liberalisation4. Control of malaria5. Development of new agricultural technologies

If I had oodles of dough, I would spend it on the R&D needed to stop all the breeding.

There seems to be no problem, whether war, famine, species extinction, deforestation, overfishing, or global warming that wouldn't be solved by stopping all the breeding. Best would be contraceptives in the water supply or spread with the CO2.

It is a huge waste of resources to keep feeding, housing and otherwise accommodating the wanton breeding, since feeding just causes more breeding.

First we put contraceptives in the bread of the RC priests, padres and their children, of course.

If you're going to throw that money away why not just divide by the number of needy and give each person that much money in their own currency and let them spend it on what they think they need.

Because if you go around the third world handing out money, someone, usually the government, will follow along behind you collecting up the money. If you distribute common nutrients, they are of virtually no value to anyone except the intended recipients. Same with small enough scale sanitation and water project. ( Larger scale project will get stripped for parts / scrap metal. )

One of the nice things about the Copenhagen Consensus is they actually consider these real-world scenarios.